The Virginian

Saturday, June 24, 2017

There’s no reason to beat around the bush here: what the FBI is claiming is mind-boggling when they claim the shooter had no target in mind. Consider the number of accidents of circumstance you would have to believe were going on here to not have the shooter doing what seems obvious from every piece of evidence we have: researching and planning for an attack on Republicans of some kind, particularly looking for an opportunity when security will be low and vulnerability will be high. This was an attack, not an “anger management” problem.

Step back, though, and think on the institutional conclusions here. Considering how ludicrous the FBI’s conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI’s conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.

We may be a little harsh here.

Keep in mind that we are reading about a report by the Associated Press about what the FBI spokesman said. The AP is notorious for bias, for lies and for being a tool of the Democrats.

Friday, June 23, 2017

The FBI tried to claim that the shooting at the baseball field was spontaneous and had no target, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Mollie Hemingway

The FBI gave an utterly bizarre update on its investigation into an attempt to assassinate Republican members of Congress. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) remains in the hospital from the attempt on his life in which two police officers and a congressional staffer were also shot. The hospital upgraded his condition to “fair” and said he faces a long recovery.

Americans may know, thanks to public social media profiles, that attempted murderer James Hodgkinson was an active Democratic activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who hated Republican members of Congress. He held membership in multiple social media groups strongly opposed to Republicans, such as “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Join the Resistance Worldwide,” “Donald Trump is not my President,” “Terminate the Republican Party,” “Boycott the Republican Party,” and “Expose Republican Fraud,” among dozens of other groups. He was a voracious consumer of liberal media and believed the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to secure the White House.

The FBI admits that Hodgkinson:

vociferously raged against Republicans in online forums,

had a piece of paper bearing the names of six members of Congress,

was reported for doing target practice outside his home in recent months before moving to Alexandria,

had mapped out a trip to the DC area,

took multiple photos of the baseball field he would later shoot up, three days after the New York Times mentioned that Republicans practiced baseball at an Alexandria baseball field with little security,

lived out of his van at the YMCA directly next door to the baseball field he shot up,

legally purchased a rifle in March 2003 and 9 mm handgun “in November 2016,”

modified the rifle at some point to accept a detachable magazine and replaced the original stock with a folding stock,

rented a storage facility to hide hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional rifle components,

asked “Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?” before firing on the Republicans,

ran a Google search for information on the “2017 Republican Convention” hours before the shooting,

and took photos at high-profile Washington locations, including the east front plaza of the U.S. Capitol and the Dirksen Senate Office.

We know from other reporting that the list was of six Republican Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Mo Brooks, who was present at the practice.

So what does the FBI decide this information means? Well, the takeaway of the briefing was characterized well by the Associated Press headline about it: “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.” The Associated Press reported the FBI:

believes the gunman “had no concrete plan to inflict violence” against Republicans,

“had not yet clarified who, if anyone, he planned to target, or why,”

believes he may have just “happened upon” the baseball game the morning of June 14, and that the attack appeared “spontaneous,”

are unclear on the “context” of Hodgkinson’s note with six names of members of Congress,

does not believe that photographs of the baseball field or other sites “represented surveillance of intended targets,” and

“painted a picture of a down-on-his-luck man with few future prospects.”

In fact, USA Today went with “FBI offers portrait of troubled Alexandria shooter with ‘anger management problem’” for their headline, since that’s what the FBI emphasized in the briefing.

The FBI also said there was no “nexus to terrorism” in the attempted mass assassination of Republican leadership by a Democratic activist. The claim that tourists take pictures of a a completely unremarkable baseball field in a tiny neighborhood also seems odd, particularly when the pictures were taken a few days after The New York Times reported that Republican members of Congress practice baseball there with little security. Someone going by the moniker “Yoenis Cespedes” wrote, “As a guy who could arguably be called a reconnaissance manager when he was in the Army, this is reconnaissance.”

Oh, and here’s a little tidbit that didn’t interest many people in the media beyond a brief mention in the last paragraphs:

Hodgkinson also visited the office of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign he had worked on as a volunteer, and was in email contact with the two Democratic senators from his home state.

I wrote last week that the media’s big problem right now is that everyone in the country knows how they’d be covering the shooting if the parties were reversed. Can you imagine if a shooter had visited the office of Sen. Ted Cruz and corresponded with two Republican senators? Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) gave emails to investigators last week but it was treated mostly as local news.

With trust in institutions at historic lows, and the bureaucracy beset by fears of politicization, the FBI made a poor decision to gaslight Americans by claiming that the assassination attempt wasn’t premeditated terrorism but a spontaneous “anger management” problem.

The FBI’s briefing appears so contrary to the facts as to be insulting. When a man with a history of hating Republicans cases a location, takes pictures, verifies the targets are Republicans before opening fire, has a list of Republican politicians in his pocket, and shoots and nearly kills Republicans, it’s hard to swallow the FBI’s contention that the shooting was “spontaneous” with “no target.” The agency should reconsider whether it wants to troll Americans about something this serious.

Hyperpoliticized, Captured-By-Progressives Garbage Institution the FBI Claims James Hodgkinson Had No Particular Target In Mind, Didn't "Surveil" the Minor, Ugly Park When He Repeatedly Scouted It and Took Pictures of It

—Ace

I don't think I'll ever trust the FBI again, and would be very skeptical of any case they made, were I sitting on a federal jury.

House intelligence committee sources say career officials at the National Security Council are slow-walking the delivery of subpoenaed records on former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice’s handling of classified information and the “unmasking” of Trump campaign workers — material from the Russian hacking probe that middle-level NSC managers claim was transferred to President Obama’s library and could “remain closed to the public for five years.”

One source, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, called the transfer curious and appeared to reflect an effort by former administration officials to obscure evidence on whether Ms. Rice and other top officials in the Obama White House illegally tried to identify which Trump campaign and transition aides had been caught up in the U.S. intelligence intercepts of Russian interference in the presidential race.

...

Democrats want the probes to stay tightly focused on possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump and collusion between his associates and the Kremlin. The U.S. intelligence community has unanimously concluded that the Kremlin was behind an organized cyberattack campaign to interfere in the U.S. election and undermine the candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton last year.

But since the Russia probes launched earlier this year, Mr. Trump and his aides have argued that the real scandal lies elsewhere. They contend that senior Obama administration officials, including Ms. Rice, inappropriately unmasked and perhaps illegally leaked to the media the names of Trump campaign officials swept up in the hacking probe, and failed to take sufficient steps to stop the hacking once it was uncovered.

Judicial Watch sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the NSC in April seeking records concerning Ms. Rice’s communications on a range of subjects.

NSC Access Management Director John Powers responded on May 23 — roughly a week before the House intelligence committee began seeking the records.

“Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library,” Mr. Powers wrote. “You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”

These were not the rural, small town deplorables with a gun and a Bible, but “people like us.”

Railing against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism, bigotry, child abuse, treason, changing lanes in rush-hour traffic, sexism, insufficient respect for LGBT, and even mopery, with The Washington Post and The New York Times in a daily race to see who can get the most rants on Page One, is great fun for the Democratic base. But so far it can’t win elections.

But neither can civility and good manners, as Jon Ossoff learned in the suburbs of Atlanta. These suburbs were thought by Democrats to be the place to break the losing streak. After all, these were not the rural, small town deplorables with a gun and a Bible, but “people like us.” Some of the suburbans even went to college, and if they went to church on Sunday they probably slept through most of the sermon. Civility and good manners came in second, too.

“Our brand is worse than Trump’s,” the glum election-night benediction by Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, has been repeated so often since that it has become a mantra. “We can’t just run against Trump.”

After a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to commit mass murder last week -- the second homicidal Bernie supporter so far this year -- the media blamed President Trump for lowering the bar on heated political rhetoric by calling his campaign opponents cruel names like "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Ted."

As soon as any conservative responds to Trump's belittling names for his rivals by erupting in a murderous rage, that will be a fantastically good point. But until then, it's idiotic. Unlike liberals, conservatives aren't easily incited to violence by words.

What we're seeing is the following: Prominent liberals repeatedly tell us, with deadly seriousness, that Trump and his supporters are: "Hitler," "fascists," "bigots," "haters," "racists," "terrorists," "criminals" and "white supremacists," which is then followed by liberals physically attacking conservatives.

To talk about "both sides" being guilty of provocative rhetoric is like talking about "both genders" being guilty of rape.

Nearly every op-ed writer at The New York Times has compared Trump to Hitler. (The conservative on the op-ed page merely called him a "proto-fascist.") If Trump is Hitler and his supporters Nazis, then the rational course of action for any civilized person is to kill them.

That's not just a theory, it's the result.

A few months ago, 38-year-old Justin Barkley shot and killed a UPS driver in a Walmart parking lot in Ithaca, New York, then ran over his body, because he thought he was killing Donald Trump. During his arraignment, Barkley told the judge: "I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly."

In the past year, there have been at least a hundred physical attacks on Trump supporters or presumed Trump supporters. The mainstream media have ignored them all. (You can click the Anti-Trump Hate Map to see some of them here -- www.amren.com/news/2017/05/anti-trump-hate-map/.)

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

After rioting at Middlebury injured a professor, here's what President Laurie Patton decreed (per Charles Murray):

In the end, the board took disciplinary action against 74 Middlebury students. Most received probation, which means that they will face more serious penalties if they violate these policies again.

No, Dr. Patton. They faced no penalty for this offense. “Probation” at Middlebury doesn’t mean a weekly meeting with your probation officer and random drug tests. It just means a temporary mark on your record that is expunged if there is no further violation. A slap on the wrist? Not even that.

A few, who took an especially prominent role in the episode, received what we call ‘college discipline,’ which places a letter in their permanent file noting their infractions. Because students often must disclose such information in applications to graduate programs and employers, it is a serious penalty, with potentially long-term consequences.

Serious penalty? Dr. Patton could write that with a straight face? Being involved in the protest will be a plus in the eyes of the admissions committees for many graduate programs. Employers? Most won’t notice, some will be amused. No one is going to say “Oh, we can’t hire this person. He was in a student protest a few years ago.”

Here's what should have happened:

Video of the protest in the lecture hall has already identified many students who were in flagrant violation of Middlebury’s policy, as stated by both Bill Burger and me at the outset of yesterday’s lecture. They are hereby suspended for the rest of the term. The administration will seek out additional video evidence and suspend all other students who can be identified. The fact that some students will not be shown on video and thereby escape punishment cannot deter the administration from acting against students for whom the evidence is clear and unambiguous.

As of this morning, Middlebury College is cooperating fully with Middlebury and Burlington police in their efforts to bring criminal charges against those who committed assault and battery against Bill Burger, Allison Stanger, and Charles Murray, with special attention to those who injured Prof. Stanger. Any students who can be proved to have been among the protesters who committed those assaults and attacked the car carrying them away from the scene will be permanently expelled, regardless of the specific role they may or may not have played.

And because of feckless enablers like Patton, these riots will happen again until they are ended by counter-violence. But by then places like Middlebury will have been destroyed as educational institutions..

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

House Democrats are continuing to block testimony from about a dozen witnesses who sought to appear before the intelligence oversight panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Congressional officials said one of the key witnesses, former informal adviser to the Trump campaign Carter Page, was scheduled to testify at a closed hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

But Democrats on the committee blocked the testimony, asserting they needed more time to prepare.

"He's the guy that many Democrats have been pointing to as the supposed mastermind and you would think they were interested hearing his story," said one Capitol Hill official.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the committee's Democratic leader, did not respond to emails seeking comment on the blocked testimony.

They don't want the truth to come out. Hope to use this as a campaign tool.

ACOSTA, PA. — On a warm June morning, a large crowd gathered in the lush, gentle folds of the Allegheny Mountains to hear President Donald Trump live on video.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be speaking with you on this great, great day,” he said. “The miners of Pennsylvania are mining coal again.”

On a stage, five men unfurled a gold banner that blared, in large black letters: “Trump Digs Coal,” as the audience went wild.

For the first time in nearly a decade, a new coal mine has opened here, and a US president has rallied alongside an industry deemed by many as obsolete.

The Acosta Deep Mine in Somerset County marks a dramatic upturn for the area. And while President Trump cannot claim that he brought the industry back here personally (this new mine was already being developed before the election), he is an effective cheerleader for folks who’ve been discounted by the political elite.

“We will begin by employing 70 to 100 miners and we hope to open a total of three new mines in the next 18 months — and that will mean additional hiring,” said George Dethlefsen, CEO of Corsa Coal, which owns the mine.

More than 400 people applied for the first wave of jobs that will pay from $50,000 to $100,000, Dethlefsen said.

In a region where the median household income is $29,050, and nearly 12 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the economic injection is huge.

‘I don’t think people outside of our small town understand how life-changing this development is.’

It also creates a ripple effect: For every new job generated by the mine, even more jobs like waitresses, hotel workers, barbers or grocery workers are needed to support the community.

“The money essentially stays here in our hometown,” said Greg Griffith, owner of Griffith Excavating, who was working the mine last week with his crew. He has hired new people to take on the workload and will employ even more as the other mines open.

“I don’t think people outside of our small town understand how life-changing this development is.”

He’s right about that. Just days after the event, progressives on Twitter slammed the mine, comparing the opening of an energy-supplying coal pit to the launching a VCR factory in the digital age. In their minds, it’s a waste of time.

And the response from the people of Acosta? Stop treating other Americans like the enemy.

They also point out that the criticism is wildly misinformed. The coal from this mine is not going to be used for energy — instead, it will be used for the production of steel for the next 15 years. (According to the World Steel Association, coal is used to make 70 percent of the steel today.)

Every single one of us relies on steel in our daily lives. It’s found in our cars, bikes and public transportation. Those wind turbines so loved by environmentalists? Made of steel. The utensils we use to eat? Steel. Medical devices used to save lives? Steel.

Consider also the most frequent lie about Trump – the claim that he himself is an extraordinary and inveterate liar, somehow even worse than his predecessor or his defeated electoral rival. But the “lies” Trump is accused of telling fall mainly into the category of opinions over which the left differs with him, or the exaggerations of a salesman who makes off-the-cuff claims without bothering to check the facts (not the same thing as a lie proper). The most memorable case of such overreach seems to be his claim that he lost the popular vote to Hillary because of voter fraud committed by illegal aliens. Since no one can seriously claim that voter fraud is non-existent, the “lie” consists in the number of fraudulent votes – three million or so – that Trump seems to have plucked out of the air. Obviously, Trump doesn’t know that there were three million fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election. But neither do his critics know there weren’t, since there has never been a national survey of voter fraud, while Democrats have done everything in their power to prevent a system of voter identification from being put in place. In other words, both sides are sustained by unsubstantiated claims, although it is Trump alone who has proposed to settle the argument through a new commission that will look into voter fraud across the fifty states.

Trump has never been accused of telling a lie with the life-altering consequences of Obama’s claim that “ISIS is on the run and al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” or that the Benghazi attack was over a video, or that you can keep your doctor if you like him. These led to electoral victories, complacency in the face of terrorist attacks and massive legislative programs. Nor has Trump lied to the FBI, the Congress and the American people about the existence of classified documents which he exposed to America’s enemies, as Clinton has.

The theme that "Trump lies" are all over the internet and the media, almost always without reference to specific lies. Yes, Trump has been known to exaggerate, but as far as I know he has not told any specific lies.

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that the government cannot deny full trademark protection to allegedly racially offensive trademarks. The opinions are here.

The case involved an Asian-American band called “The Slants.” It sought federal registration of that mark. The Patent and Trademark Office denied the application under a Lanham Act provision prohibiting trademarks that may “disparage. . .or bring. . .into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead.”

The Court ruled in favor of The Slants. The vote was unanimous, though the Court split 4-4 on some of the finer points.

The problem is, the way the play Julius Caesar unfolds totally contradicts their agenda. Are they really this stupid, or just blind with partisanship?

The whole point of this controversial retelling is to allow a bunch of progressive wankers to indulge in a little piece of assassination porn. And after that bloody money shot, the play still has two acts to go, with no pleasant afterglow for the murderous conspirators. They end up crushed, defeated, and dead; all they accomplished was to usher in the autocratic rule they claimed to be preventing.

This Central Park show would save a lot of time for everyone if they just jumped right to the murder and left off the ending. It would be much more satisfying to the virtue signalling cosmopolitan herd that is their target audience.

Did the Public Theater not actually read the whole play? Do they not know history? Being Leftists, probably they don’t. I don’t remember who said it, but it reminds me of a quote I heard that progressives are the only people you can convince to touch a hot stove twice. They have great faith in their pseudo-religion of politics to sever the connections between cause and effect. Ever since the election various forces on the Left seem to be trying to psyche themselves up for some kind of terrible action. The rhetoric and the violence are both escalating. Their extremism will not get them the results they desire, and will destroy them as well. That is what Shakespeare unequivocally shows us.

I do find it interesting they selected dead white cis-gendered male Shakespeare as the vessel for their fury. What, weren’t there any plays available by a woke, gender fluid writer from an oppressed group?

And yet, despite the fundamental betrayal of Shakespeare’s conclusions, and the horrible hatred on display towards Trump and his voters, the establishment remains largely supportive of the production. Global corporations like Time Warner stand by their funding choices, despite the public outcries and controversy. What gives?

To understand why the elites are being so rigid and unresponsive to such obvious provocations, it’s important to look at the works of another insightful English writer. George Orwell pegged the motivation here, in his frighteningly accurate book 1984. Orwell noted:

“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors…all the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present day society from being perceived.”

The election of 2016 was a direct assault by the people on the entrenched forces of the establishment. It’s probably the first time in a very long time in America where the elites were not able to manipulate the outcome within the parameters of their carefully managed illusions of choice. Like Orwell described, they’ve been able to stick to their Narrative script for decades now, and channel all planning and development through their agenda. They have been the gatekeepers, and for any advancement you must play by their rules.

When the first real challenger to this dominance arises, note their ultimate reaction: calls to murder anyone who will not submit to their status quo. To get the message out, they are twisting art into a blatant threat. However, such is the competence of our would-be rulers they overlook the clear conclusions of the work they are tainting with their hyper-partisan antics. We really need a better word than “elites” to describe these self-serving buffoons.

Such over the top histrionics enacted by our educated classes can be seen as a dangerous omen. Just like ancient Rome, the decadence and corruption of our ruling classes could lead to national disaster. One of the mightiest civilizations ever known was overrun by primitive invading hordes.

Will that be our fate, ruin due to governing class misrule? Perhaps. However, I see a different dynamic opening up.

On June 16, 2017, the Public Theater performance of Julius Caesar was interrupted. Two brave citizens struck right at this presumptive heart of cosmopolitan superiority, calling it and its patrons out as the fascists they are. Expect more like this, as the tactics of Alinsky are turned against the minions of the budding totalitarian state (EDIT June 19: as predicted, there were further disruptions. Two of them).

I always say in America, we are our own barbarians. Our culture is collapsing, but really, it’s not our culture. For decades we have been living in a Matrix-like alternative reality, the insidious slow boil of Cultural Marxism. That is what is showing its exhaustion and strain, and resorting to intimidation to try to artificially extend its existence: the long march Leftism that has infiltrated and denigrated our institutions.

The conspiracy of Postmodernism is dead. The Deplorables are coming to overthrow this failed system with the values that made the United States great in the first place.

Change starts in the arts. Watch this blog for more developments of this joyous insurgency.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Leftists said if Trump won, that there’d be violent mobs of hate, and intolerant fascists would try to silence those with whom they disagree. And they were right. It just was by a group of people from which they didn’t expect it: themselves.

Mark Steyn: Don't try to appropriate real resistance.

A radical from a fringe group, led by insane rumor and innuendo, has shot someone who is not even the leader of the faction he hates.

Is Rep. Scalise’s middle name Ferdinand?

Listen to me now; stop believing crazy people, even those in the media. Yesterday, in a friend’s post someone called me racist/sexist/homophobic or implied it because apparently I want to “suppress voices” in science fiction. NO ONE who knows me can believe that. This woman knows me. And this was over an aesthetic disagreement in tiny, irrelevant science fiction.

LISTEN TO ME NOW, it’s time to believe your lying eyes and accept that people can disagree with you without being evil. It’s time to investigate all news, even the ones you think confirm you bias. It’s time to wake up.

YOU DON’T WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD. There is nothing for you here. It didn’t turn out well in 1914. It won’t turn out well now.

Sorry -- I've been trying to convince people on the right that the only way to fight a double-standard is to finally insist on a single-standard, and impose the same rules on our Ruling Class that they impose on us.

It's not that you guys aren't important -- it's just that most of you already agree.

But there's a contingent on the right that keeps arguing that we must pretend the rule we want is already in force, and can't seem to grasp that the rule we don't want is already in force, but only selectively deployed against us.

See, for example, this solid citizen whose objection to disorganized violence against the right is that it should be more organized so it will be more effective.

But CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times will keep writing apologias for leftist violence -- when they bother to even acknowledge it.

Now is not the time to start yelling "Rhetoric doesn't cause violence!" 1, it almost certainly does -- a society that condones thievery will see more thieving, after all -- and 2, we cannot continue living under the "Republican rhetoric only causes violence!" rule.

A bad rule is many times worse when it is only applied against a disfavored caste.

This man came from the extreme end of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but he didn’t emerge entirely by himself. He came from a petri dish that we are all submerged in, nurturing hate as never before in most of our lifetimes.

We need look no further than yesterday’s grilling of Jeff Sessions by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This investigation is putatively about Russian interference in our election, but we learned nothing about that. Not a thing. In fact, it was barely mentioned. The entire event was used as a means to “get Trump” and/or his associates. Senators like Heinrich ooze hate, obviously playing to a likeminded crowd. It is indeed a “witch hunt” and any reader ofThe Crucible knows where that leads.

Meanwhile, just this past weekend, here in Los Angeles, we had our annual gay pride celebration. But it didn’t seem to be about pride at all, only about unremitting attacks on our president (and by implication anyone Republican), as if everyone in the streets would have been delighted to see a replay of Kathy Griffin’s nauseating decapitation or the denouement of the current Shakespeare in the Park production where a Trump/Caesar is beheaded nightly. (Ironically, Trump was on record for gay marriage long before Clinton or Obama, but facts mean nothing to the pussy-hatted.)

And then there were the wild accusations of anti-Semitism when nearly half of Trump’s family is Jewish and — as it turned out — of the few such incidents that have occurred since his inauguration none were committed by his supporters. In fact, they all came from the left. This was, of course, barely reported. It didn’t fit the narrative of hate.

And this is to omit the most horrifying examples of all — the absolutely despicable behavior toward conservatives on our campuses. It’s like the return of the Brown Shirts.

Sense a pattern?

With all due respect to Roger Simon, but I'm not convinced that the Left is not all for this.

Mark Steyn: If you put on a mask and beat up people, you're the fascist.

This brand new SteynPost was taped hours before this morning's shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others at a GOP team practice for the Congressional baseball game. Mark looks at recent examples of political violence, and the left's preference not for winning the debate but for shutting down the debate - by any means necessary. Click above to watch.

Payback for firing Mueller's buddy Comey

The explosion of violence against conservatives across the country is being intentionally ginned up by Democrats, reporters, TV hosts, late-night comedians and celebrities, who compete with one another to come up with the most vile epithets for Trump and his supporters.

They go right up to the line, trying not to cross it, by, for example, vamping with a realistic photo of a decapitated Trump or calling the president a "piece of s---" while hosting a show on CNN.

The media are orchestrating a bloodless coup, but they're perfectly content to have their low-IQ shock troops pursue a bloody coup.

This week, one of the left's foot soldiers gunned down Republican members of Congress and their staff while they were playing baseball in Virginia. Democratic Socialist James Hodgkinson was prevented from committing a mass murder only by the happenstance of a member of the Republican leadership being there, along with his 24-hour Capitol Police protection.

Before the election the media declared themselves horrified that anyone who question the legitimacy of the election. Once they lost, they lost it.

It began with Trump's inauguration, when a leftist group plotted to pump a debilitating gas into one Trump inaugural ball, military families were assaulted upon leaving the Veterans' Inaugural Ball, and attendees of other balls had water thrown on them.

Since then, masked, armed liberals around the country have formed military-style organizations to beat up conservatives. In liberal towns, the police are regularly ordered to stand down to allow the assaults to proceed unimpeded.

The media only declared a crisis when conservatives fought back, smashing the black-clad beta males. ("Battle for Berkeley!")

There is more media coverage for conservatives' "microaggressions" toward powerful minorities -– such as using the wrong pronoun -- than there is for liberals' physical attacks on conservatives, including macings, concussions and hospitalizations.

And now some nut Bernie Sanders-supporter confirms that it's Republicans standing on a baseball field, before opening fire.

Wait for it: "we need to beware of "backlash" against leftist Democrats"

Never mind that one of Bernie Sanders most ardent supporters and Rachel Maddow superfan tried to assassinate a bunch of Republican congressmen. What we have to be concerned about is a backlash against Democrats who want to behead, stab or defenestrate Donald Trump.

Bet on it in tomorrow's Virginian Pilot.

All in all Hodgkinson's comments on Facebooks and in his published letters was rather typical of the people whose letters are published daily in the Virginian Pilot and echo the editorial position of the paper's editors. This is the problem. The man who tried to assassinate Republicans was not a deranged nut; he was firmly in the mainstream of the Democrat party.

Such traditions [the congressional baseball game] are difficult to sustain in a culture where pop stars are making videos pulling guns on the President, and comedians are swinging around severed presidential heads, and theatregoers are willing to pay Broadway prices to see Julius Trump stabbed to death on the Ides of March. In this new ball game there are college professors calling for Republicans to be "lined up and shot" - and helpfully clarifying "That's not hyperbole." Upon arrival, one notes, the shooter asked a spectator whether it was the GOP or the Democrats on the field. On receiving the answer he wanted, he advanced upon his target.

UPDATE: Unbelievable as it may seem, Sen. Bernie Sanders and I have developed a friendship in recent years — something I attribute to a common concern over the corrupting nature of super-wealth and a shared love for Ben and Jerry’s Redistribution of Fudge ice cream. Upset at the negative press he received over some recent comments, Sanders enlisted my help in acquiring a platform for defending himself before the American people. What follows are the words of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He totally wrote them, you guys. For serious.

Recently I made news due to some tough questions I had for Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Last year, Vought wrote an article defending Wheaton College for sacking a professor who taught that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, contrary to the school’s statement of faith.

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology,” he wrote. “They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

I was greatly troubled by these words, so I asked a few questions, things like: “Why are you so Islamophobic? “On a scale from 8 to 10, how much do you hate Jews? “Does your mouth get dry from spitting on Buddhists all day?” You know, typical Senate hearing type of inquiries.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, many people became rather unhinged in response, accusing me of thinking all Christians are unfit for public office, of being ignorant of basic Christian theology and the constitutional prohibition against religious tests for officeholders. Nothing could be further from the truth. So I’d like to take this opportunity to set the record straight about what I, Sen. Bernie Sanders, hoped to accomplish with my questions.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Like many of America’s political and media elites, she [Hillary] still doesn’t understand the game Russia is playing, or that the purpose of Moscow’s meddling isn’t to elect Trump but to undermine America’s faith in elections.

Vladimir Putin himself spelled it out in a recent interview with Bloomberg News. He denied that Russia had anything to do with the recent cyber-attacks on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Clinton campaign. Then he said, “Does it even matter who hacked this data from the campaign headquarters of Mrs. Clinton? Is that really important? The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

Set aside the irony of a strongman like Putin singing the praises of transparency. The important thing, from Russia’s perspective, is that emails and information Clinton and the Democratic Party wanted to keep private were released to the world. Some of those emails were embarrassing, and even led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of her party’s convention in July.

But that was not the purpose of releasing them, any more than Russia’s broader influence operations are meant to deny Clinton the White House. The operations serve a far greater goal: to make democracy itself look bad, and to make American democracy in particular look like a sham.

This was before the election, when Hillary was a sure winner and the only question was how badly Trump would be defeated.

But Trump won, and Democrats used the leaks as an excuse to blame the Russian for stealing the election that was rightfully theirs.

The American intelligence community appears to share the unanimous opinion that the Russians tried to influence the election. And, of course, they focused on Trump and desperately tried to find out how he colluded with the Russian. The only problem is that they couldn't because he didn't.

So what were the Russian up to and did they have political allies in the US? Was there collusion, and if so, who colluded with who?

If I were Putin and wanted to appoint the next American President, it wouldn't be Trump. Trump is for a stronger military, more energy production and an America First policy. Hillary promised a continuation of Obama policies: a weaker military, "leading from behind," reduced energy production and a deal with Iran. Objectively, Hillary would be Putin's preferred President. Her policies would benefit a resurgent Russian military whose economy depends primary on oil and gas production.

And Russians can read the polls at least as well as Democrats. They were also expecting a Hillary presidency. So what were they up to?

The Russians are playing a long game and interfering in the US elections it appears increasingly likely that Washington politicos are focused on the wrong target. The Russians were not trying to get Trump elected; that was unlikely and not even in their interest. It's now obvious to everyone with an ounce of common sense that there was no “collusion” between Putin and the Trump team leading up to the election. That was a story concocted by Hillary’s campaign to explain her humiliating loss and a way for Democrats to undermine the Trump administration.

But the Russians may well have made, and continue to make, an effort to interfere with the American election and the political system. Thanks to a rabid press, a huge number of Americans, a large portion of the Democrat Party, believe that the election was stolen. What’s more, they distrust the American electoral system. For them, elections are invalid unless their side wins.

Elections are the critical bedrock of a functioning republic. It’s the way political power passes from one party to another without violence. It allows the peaceful transition of power on the understanding that another election could change the results. It’s assumed that the passage of political power from one party to another is the legitimate expression of the people. Once that assumption is denied, factions replace each other using threats and physical violence. As Mao said of dictatorships: “political power comes from the barrel of a gun.”

Which brings me to Russian meddling. Was there collusion? If so, question who colluded with Putin to create chaos in the American electoral system? Who is busy delegitimatizing a duly elected President? Who is busy hacking the election?

Robert Mueller has a job ahead of him if he takes his mandate seriously. The press is certainly part of the attempt to overturn the election. So is that part of government referred to as "The Deep State." Other suspects are certain members of the Intelligence community, segments of the Justice Department and leading members of the Democrat party. Who in these factions has been in touch with agents of the Russian government? Are any on Putin’s payroll or are they volunteers? Are they willing agents or simply dupes?

I have been opposed to an investigation into Russian meddling since it was obviously just a way of overturning Trump’s election. Now it’s worth looking at alternative Russian motives, alternative Russian objectives and alternative Russian agents.

What, at this point, is the rationale for having a “special counsel” investigate matters relating to Russian involvement in the 2016 election and matters stemming from the investigation of these matters? We don’t need a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in itself. The FBI and various congressional committees can handle that.

We don’t need a special counsel to investigate allegations of collusion by President Trump. After about a year of digging, no one has uncovered evidence of such collusion. Indeed, James Comey admitted that Trump wasn’t under investigation for collusion (or anything else).

We don’t need a special counsel to investigate people like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Comey said that President Trump was fine with letting the chips fall where they may as to these “satellite associates.”

Do we need a special counsel to investigate Michael Flynn? I don’t think so. Trump apparently said he hoped Comey would go easy on Flynn, but that ship has sailed. If Trump wants to intervene again on Flynn’s behalf, it will surely be at the pardon or commutation stage.

Manning still doesn't seem to have the slightest clue as to the impact of her stealing of this classified material. When she's drinking her Starbucks,* does she ever think about the Afghan villagers, for example, whose life she put in danger by her disclosures? Yet we're supposed to feel sorry for her for her time in prison.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Currently, news reports indicate that vigilante groups are roaming the campus with bats, seeking out Weinstein supporters (for what reason, you can use your imagination)....

Evergreen State represents the natural culmination of postmodern thought—roving mobs attempting to silence dissenting thought merely based on race, informed by far left theories that weaponize a victim status drawn solely from immutable, innate traits. Unfortunately, I cannot place full blame on the students either, as they have been indoctrinated with these ideas on the very campus that is now serving as the petri dish for applied postmodernism.

It is no coincidence that, while society outside the walls of campus looks on with disbelief, administrators to this point have been siding with the students. For if they were to repudiate the actions of the students, they would also need to repudiate the ideology with which they have been brainwashing them. In other words, taking a stand against the students would require administrators and professors to re-evaluate the meaning and value of the entire raison d’etre of their adult professional careers. Holding on to madness is a way of forestalling dealing with the grief that comes with the realization that one’s higher purpose has been a fraud. I am not sure of the final outcome, as this kind of process is long, difficult, and very, very painful.

National ICE Council President Christopher Crane confirmed the failure of ICE management to track these assaults in a phone conversation with Breitbart Texas.

Wilcox added, “This will surely change under President Trump, however.” He reasoned, “We’ve seen big strides in immigration transparency with the new administration, including the promise to report on sanctuary jurisdictions and illegal-alien crime. The only people that could be against such efforts are Obama-holdovers within DHS and anti-borders and anti-American extremists.”

Sunday, June 11, 2017

It’s 2017 and Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House and more statewide offices than you can shake a big bundle of fake news papers at. And, potentially soon, a Supreme Court that takes its guidelines from the Constitution not Das Kapital and the National Social Justice Party.

Here’s the bad news, Republicans are still Republicans.

The media throws some chum in the water and sits back and watches the bloody fun as Republicans go after Republicans for the entertainment of their enemies. Scandals are manufactured and then strategically aimed to divide and conquer Republicans. But the real target is the conservative agenda.

At the heart of the controversy over all these manufactured fake news scandals are two vital questions.

1. Was the last presidential election legitimate?

2. Should anyone to the right of the left be able to govern?

The left has answered “No” to both questions. The first question was answered in the negative because the second answer was “Never”.

Republicans have varied reactions to Trump. Leftists have only one reaction to anyone to the right of them. It’s the same reaction you get if you send an ISIS member into Temple Beth Shalom. If President Kasich were in the White House, you would be reading in the Washington Post how he singlehandedly brought back the Klan, causes Bursitis and is secretly doing the bidding of the Brazilians.

It’s a swamp of innuendo based on anonymous sources, investigations fed by illegal eavesdropping, scandals in which the outrage comes before the evidence whose purpose is to overturn an election. These aren’t investigations. They’re a coup by the losing side that refuses to admit it lost a presidential election. The coup isn’t just aimed at President Trump or any single member of his administration.

It’s aimed at America, at democracy and at any policy to the right of free entitlements and no freedoms.

...

Yes, the left really hates you. It doesn’t care that you’re socially liberal and fiscally conservative or the other way around. It doesn’t care if you agree with it on 99.9% of the issues. It will still hang you from a lamppost in Portland or Berkeley because of that 0.1%. If you doubt that, look at how many Communists survived Stalin and Mao. Or how Joe Lieberman went from the vice presidential nominee to a right-wing extremist because he believed that terrorism was a bad thing or how Joe Manchin is an honorary Republican because he does controversial things like vote to approve a president’s cabinet nominees.

There’s no room in the Democrat Party for democrats. There sure as hell isn’t any for Republicans.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

If Comey and Mueller are friends there is an obvious conflict of interest. I have been wondering why Mueller and Comey were allowed to collude before Comey's testimony.

The complaint which President Trump's lawyer has threatened to file against former FBI director James Comey, for admittedly leaking memos about his conversations with the president, is almost certain to fail in a legal sense, but it could be very successful in many other ways, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf....

However, notes Banzhaf, even a complaint which fails legally, and does not trigger any prosecution or other adverse action against the respondent, can be very beneficial to Trump and his team.

First, the actual filing of the complaint is bound to generate considerable publicity, thereby providing an additional opportunity for his lawyers to try to explain in great detail to the public why they think Comey's conduct was wrongful and even illegal.

Second, the filing and resulting investigation would undercut Comey's credibility as a witness in any criminal proceeding, in the ongoing credibility battle between himself and Trump, and generally in the eyes of the public, suggests Banzhaf.

Third, it could create an apparent conflict of interest in the eyes of many since the same agency which would supposedly be conducting an impartial investigation of Comey is at the very same time working with him to obtain documents and testimony for Mueller's investigation.

Moreover, since Comey's own testimony strongly suggested that he and Mueller are friends, Trump can claim that Mueller will try to persuade those investigating the complaint against Comey to go easy on him - a bizarre parallel to what Comey claims Trump asked him to do regarding Michael Flynn.

On October 19th last year I called Comey "a 6' 8" gummi worm". That was very much on display on Thursday, as the straight arrow writhed and agonized over what he might have done had he been a "stronger man". He is far too psychologically weird and insecure ever to have got close to being FBI Director (far weirder than Hoover, even if you believe every single story about the guy), and the fact that he did ought to be deeply unnerving to Americans.

On the Russia investigation:

As everyone more sentient than an earthworm should know by now, "the Russia investigation" is Deep State dinner-theatre. I wrote a while back that, in today's Hollywood, what Hitchcock used to call "the MacGuffin" - the pretext that sets the caper afoot, the secret papers, the microfilm - has degenerated into a MacNuffin: there's no longer even a pretense that these stories are about anything. The "Russia investigation" is the ne plus ultra of MacNuffins, so smoothly transferred from Los Angeles to Washington that one vaguely suspects some studio vice-prez who bundled for Hillary came up with the idea as a reality-show pilot that accidentally bust out of the laboratory.

On Trump being in cahoots with the Russians:

He isn't, and never has been. Comey confirmed that to Trump three times. As far as I'm aware, I'm not a suspected Russian agent, but I know something about being mired under a cloud of suspicion. In the Mann vs Steyn case, I have made the point in court filings to the various lethargic jurists that being an alleged defamer is a serious slur on one's reputation that should entitle one to a speedy trial. To no avail, of course: we're about to enter our sixth year in the clogged toilet of DC justice, and no nearer a trial date in that joke jurisdiction than we were on Day One. Likewise, were my local paper to report "unnamed sources" claiming that the sheriff's department was investigating me as a suspected drug dealer, I would expect the sheriff to issue a statement saying that there was no such investigation. How much worse is it for the incoming chief of state of the global superpower when false rumors are circulating that he's a Russian agent? And these rumors are being disseminated with the express intent of crippling his incoming administration before it's even come in?

Comey's rationale for refusing to announce in public that Trump isn't "under investigation" was that that situation might conceivably change in the future. That's like the sheriff refusing to confirm that I'm not under investigation because he doesn't know whether I'll hold up a liquor store next week. Given the damage done by the leaking of every vague guilt-by-association rumor but not the central fact of the case, Trump was right to fire this guy - in the national interest.

On impeachment:

What happens if Trump is impeached and removed from office? Easy: Having tasted blood, "the Russia investigation" will move on to Mike Pence, and Comey's successor will announce he can't confirm or deny whether Pence is under investigation. So Pence will be impeached and removed, and Speaker Ryan will become the next person whose status as crack Russian undercover operative can't be confirmed or denied, and so it will go all the way down through the President Pro Tem of the Senate and the Secretary of Transportation and the Director of the Bureau of Paper Clips. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, and Trumpiana has always been in league with Russia.

This is why Washington must be overturned and why Trump's election was A VERY GOOD THING.

Evergreen State College is nestled far away from reality in the misty paradise of Olympia, Washington, a mossy and supernatural village which is run by lesbian elves and transgender circus performers. The school bears the dubious distinction of being “one of the least selective universities in the nation with an admittance rate of 98%.”

Over the past couple weeks, Evergreen has leapfrogged over Yale, Mizzou, and even Berkeley to become the most eagerly self-castrating school of higher learning in the US of A.

Reaching back to the 1970s, the school has hosted an annual “Day of Absence” in which nonwhite students and faculty were encouraged to skip school and reflect elsewhere on how much it sucked to go to a racist school with racist teachers and racist students and racist buildings with racist libraries full of all that racist knowledge, even though their educations were likely almost entirely funded by racist white taxpayers. The annual holiday was supposed to underline what college life would be like without black people, which presumably would make white students feel bad about themselves and possibly even lead to mass self-sterilization in the hope of building a better future. (If you’ve ever wondered what a campus looks like without black people, this should give you an idea. At the risk of being honest, it doesn’t look all that bad.)

This year, due to caterwauling among Students of Color that they felt unsafe on the campus due to Donald Trump’s election—despite the statistical possibility that not a single teacher nor student on the entire campus voted for Trump or even dared to utter one public word in support of him—the Day of Absence’s organizers attempted to flip the script. Instead of the usual routine, which involved black students effectively playing hooky, white students were encouraged to stay off campus, where they could attend workshops that scrubbed their brains clean of any self-interest and instead filled their crania with wholesome and forward-looking feelings of self-loathing.

ATLANTA, GA—After years of publishing distorted headlines, slanted news articles, and heavily biased news coverage, media giant CNN announced Friday that it has decided to launch a spinoff site that focuses on real news comprised of objective facts.

Dubbed “CNN: Real,” the site is designed to bring the news media empire into the arena of publishing real news, a step away from its roots as a channel that covers entirely fabricated stories and shamelessly spins all news into liberal talking points.

“We know this is going to get some push-back from our viewer base, but don’t worry: the original CNN site and cable channel are still a large part of our business,” company Vice President Michael Bass said during an announcement on the shift toward real news. “Anytime you want to have your biases confirmed, CNN will be there.”

Friday, June 09, 2017

Remember that Pepsi Ad that Managed to Offend Everyone?

Swamp Rat James Comey

I have been told that you can't believe anythingmost things stuff you read on the internet. but we also know that most of what we read in the so-called "legitimate" press is also a pack of lies.

For example, just yesterday, Liberal Saint (and former FBI Director) James Comey testified that a major story in the NY Times was a lie from end to end.

So I read the following narrative with a jaundiced eye and decided to do a little checking on my own, just to see if the basic facts, dates, times, and job descriptions was accurate. I was really surprised to find out that it is. The opinions are those of the author, Kevin Jackson.

So here goes:

James Comey is a poisonous snake of the highest order.

He is a deep-water Swamp Denizen who has been highly paid to deliberately provide cover for high-level corruption by the Clintons and Obama. He has been central to trying to destroy the Trump campaign and then the Trump administration from the start. He is as dirty as they come in DC.

Comey had highest-level cover (the FBI no less) and was deep into an effort to eliminate Trump. Trump had to move hard, fast, and at exactly the right time to cut the head off the snake without getting bitten by the snake or being finished by the other swamp denizens.

Will you look at that.No burkhas.No hijabs.Miniskirts.And no bearded thugs with automatic weapons driving around in pickup trucks.It looks like this is an American city.I've seen similar photos of Tehran from prior to 1979.Also Beirut. Did you know that Beirut used to be called "The Paris of the Mideast"?Yes, it did.But then, something must've happened in that part of the world.Something terrible.Something absolutely devastating and soul-crushing.We may never know what it is, though.It's a complete mystery.

Thursday, June 08, 2017

James Comey has a story to tell, and in his account, there is no doubt about who is the hero. Comey, by reputation, has a monumental ego. His prepared testimony for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which you can read here, is consistent with that image. It is also clear that Comey is a consummate creature of Washington.

Comey’s narrative suggests that from the beginning, he viewed President Trump with suspicion as an interloper in Comey’s D.C. world. He apparently never had a conversation with Trump without immediately documenting it in a memo and discussing it with his aides at the FBI. For some reason, Comey sees fit to contrast his relationships with Presidents Obama and Trump: